Cross Country Issue 268: October 2026

Staring at the sun

Climbing out from launch I watched the ground drop below me. That definitely never gets old. 

I circled up to a hang glider pilot at base – if there was a base, it was a blue day, let’s call it the top of the climb – and we flew around each other swapping position, higher, lower, higher. That never gets old either, although it is getting rarer. After a while he shot off west and I meandered east. Everything below was brown and parched, the tractors in the fields kicking up clouds of dust and straw which filled the air.

Europe’s summer heatwave affected us all, baking the ground in the flatlands, turning everywhere into Piedrahita, and melting the snow and ice in the mountains. Our social media feeds filled with pilots at 4,000, 4,500, 5,000m! But look at that poor glacier down there, gasping in the sun. 

A typical summer sees the freezing level in the Alps sit at around 3,000-4,000m. This year it rose above 5,000m numerous times. Is it possible to have the best flight of your life when the glaciers below you are vanishing? When the reservoirs and rivers are drying up? When there is a wildfire on the horizon? 

As pilots we see the changes before others do, and certainly before they are widely reported. We spot when the forests we hike through don’t look so healthy, or when the treeline in our local valley shifts over time, or when the glaciers visibly shrink year on year, or the local ski resort shuts its gates for the very last time. We know what’s happening – we see it, fly through and above it.

Flying makes you think about the world and environment around you, it makes you engage brain, body and soul. It sharpens your view, on how we act, or should be acting. 

Still in Europe, the heat of the sun was put on hold for a magical two minutes as summer started its slow drift to autumn. The chance to fly in the light of a full eclipse of the sun was a chance to experience something completely unique.

Photographers dug out lenses and filters and downloaded apps that forecast sunset times and degrees-from-horizon. Then they pointed-and-shot and hoped for the best. 

I realised that’s how I felt on landing after my dry-as-a-bone heatwave flight. Despite the dust and cloudless sky and the country in drought, it was a five-star flying day – we were having a great time, and we were pointing at the sun, at the future, hoping for the best.

From flying with giants in Chelan to soaring wingtip to wingtip with a world champion in France, to following an X-Pyr pilot across the Pyrenees to learning to tow by drone in China, this issue is packed with some brilliant stories from incredible pilots across the world – enjoy the magazine!

Ed Ewing, editor

Features

In the Core: People, news and insight

Flying IQ: Helping you fly better

Kitlist: Design insight